Firstly look at vendor support.

http://www.daz3d.com/vendor - have a look through this list and I think you will see a vast number of vendors who have migrated from Poser V4 support to Daz Studio Genesis Support.

So there is a trend of vendor changing markets. Usually the cause for this is that they have sampled the other market and found it more viable.

Vendors still at Renderosity are offering more and more Daz Studio Support also. Renderosity is slowly adding more DS sales and support.

Now look at website activity.

Visit Alexa.com it has some rankings based on traffic.

DAZ3D - Ranked 6444 in USA ---- Daily time on site is 15mins up 30%

Smith Micro - Ranked in USA 23 037 ---- Daily TIme on Site 3mins down 12%

Renderosity - Ranked in USA 11 762 ---- Daily Time on Site 10mins down 14%

Hivewire3d - Ranked in USA 300 236...

RuntimeDNA - Ranked in USA 35 932...

If you visit each website it's quite easy to see which has the most activity in the forums and galleries too. Compare the DAZ3D Forums to any other and you will see a clear leader for activity.

Industry Activity

When the largest content provider in the sector decides to stop supporting Poser for it's latest major product generation. It's a pretty clear indicator that it has analysed its surveys and sales data and decided it is the right time to do that. Meaning that the Daz Studio market is large enough not to need Poser support to continue. Or Poser oriented sales are not of a significant volume as that will be missed.

News Feed monitoring

Try going to google news and typing in Smith Micro and Daz3D - Daz3d reveal links to industry news and recent positive happenings with the company and it's products. Smith Micro reveal a portrait of a company with a falling share price .... its lost almost %90 of it's value in 5 years from $16 a share to $1.20... Type in Poser and there is not one relevant news feed on the first page of results.

So you can say that the data is limited or biased, but that is just not the case it's from quite varied and reliable sources that reveal an overall litmus test as to the state of Poser Smith Micro and Daz3D.

Ahh statistics. I really don't see this proves anything as to what system is more popular, or the argument about "is it worth dumping thousands of dollars of investment and following the bottomless pit that is Victoria 1- 45 and moving to Studio and locking into the DAZ business model". Vendor support:

As a vendor when an industry splits for example into both betamax and VHS one has to choose to support one or both, most seem to support both, some don't, I cannot blame them. Daz has always been the No 1 place for content... they made the base figure. But the number of Vendors spread across all the independent sites has always been bigger. Daz is encouraging vendors to NOT support Poser as part of its monopoly strategy. Yes the ultimate free market... one market. Mine.

Website activity:

Has this actually changed? I used to go to Daz all the time, I don't now, I never went to Smith Micro, its site was rubbish and always has been. Spend more time in renderosity now.

Industry activity:

When the largest content provider decided it was following a pattern of just doing content to drive people to its own software in a commercially driven move to destroy competition and dominate the market, it is acting under commercial shareholder pressure in a gamble that may pay off. They want to give the customer no choice, establish a monopoly and get all the cash. Thats what drives this, not "oh we can forgo Poser income" they are saying If you want our content you MUST use Studio. OK. Fair enough. I like to pause before I run off the dollar cliff with the other lemmings.

I'm also sure that all those happy people who invested in superior Betamax products were delighted when they were told they had to have VHS. Yea it happens... we don't need to be happy about it.

News Feed Monitoring:

Poser is just a program from a big software publishing house I would not expect it to be front page news it never has been. They don't really care that much about Poser any more than DAZ cares about its customers when it brings out a new figure with all new content every 6 months then dumps it. I used poser because the Daz customer service is terrible, its approach is arrogant, and unashamedly corporatist, treating vendors and customers like faceless ants. I did not want to reward the company for its behaviour by going Studio. I'm not claiming Smith Micro is any Better. It certainly is not any worse, and once I buy Poser I am done with them.

And I had a choice.

Daz wants a Monopoly. If poser shuts down I am absolutely sure Daz will instantly lower prices, give content for free and act counter to every monopoly in history! Of course it will. Did you spot the flying pig just then?

Neither company really gives a stuff about us the customer, we are walking wallets to be conned into buying new content every week or a "major upgrade" to a bug filled program.

I just think it is a shame when we turn into partizan nitwits over something as transparent as Daz's effective but greedy monopolist business strategy or the "drift of Poser into irrelevance" as part of Smith Micro's tumbling share price.

As a customer I just hate getting ripped off, and have lost patience with Poser, Daz, Smith Micro, and the whole "My program is better than your program" rubbish.

I also think it is interesting that very often apologists who applaud a company for being corporately effective in establishing a monopoly and believe the hype they are told about this being better and brighter, bigger and bolder, become the first in the queue to complain when as a result the price goes up, and they are forced to buy new stuff again and again due to "product development". Windows anyone?

You post was very emotion and full of falsehoods... you started the fight with this thread for not any good reason, and it gets relegated here. And the words like monopoly and hype and you expect a civil discussion?  This is why the community is really split. You probably should stop feeling so entitled first of all. That's really why there's no native support of DAZ products in  Poser. But you want DAZ to make stuff for you. They did, those users didn't want it, now their content selections are reduced and now they want to cry victim and create threads proclaiming that the "Evil DAZ empire" is trying to ruin their life. Sorry it didn't happen like that, and to keep beating the dead horse is past getting old.

Once you realize that, then you'll take your issues to the software company that you've chosen to give your support to and demand they give you the content you're not getting. 

So I'll say this time:

This is is the DAZ forum. Please take your bashing back to the Poser forum if you're unhappy with the DAZ offerings.

Thanks.